ATI RADEON 9600

Graphics cards on the ATI RADEON 9600 GPU differ from RADEON 9600 PRO-based ones in frequencies only. However, two cards on these two processors may differ greatly in appearance even if they come from the same manufacturer: the RADEON 9600 is for cheap products with all the ensuing consequences.

I took a RADEON 9600 card from Sapphire for my tests:

The card carries the stamp of a “cheapened product”: few details, a passive heatsink, TSOP-packaged memory. There are 128MB of DDR SDRAM onboard in chips from Samsung with a cycle time of 4ns (Samsung K4D261638F-TC40).

The nominal frequencies of the GPU and memory are 325/400 (200DDR) MHz. This card had a splendid frequency growth in my overclocking tests: 425/525MHz.

ATI RADEON 9600 SE

This graphics processor is the result of an attempt to make the RADEON 9600 still cheaper by cutting its memory bus in two: from 128 bits to 64 bits.

So welcome the RADEON 9600 SE graphics card from Sapphire:

You see that this card has the same PCB design as the previous one (with the original 128-bit bus), while the reduction of the bus width is done by installing twice less memory. Besides that, the GPU has an even humbler heatsink on.

The card uses memory chips from Mosel Vitelic with a cycle time of 5ns (V58C2256164SAT5B). The frequencies of the GPU and memory are 325/366 (183DDR) MHz. The overclocking results were average: 400/400MHz.